Breeding cows and washing drills

The two days a week of "actual work" seems to be working. Now that I'm more or less trained in at the OR, it's less frightening and painful. I haven't done a stupid thing there for a whole week! (as of tomorrow) By the by, don't put drills and their fancy attachments into the ultrasound (it's a soap bath in addition to the ultrasound bit).

I still have some definite problems with an eight-hour work day. Oh, for a two hour siesta.

The other five days of the week are much more fun. Not only do I get the siesta, I get to play with cows and garden. I've become very nostalgic for the summers I spent training show cows, since there's nothing like dragging a cow around on a lead rope for a couple of hours to make you feel like you've accomplished something in the day. I can't do that now, of course, since the heifers are crazy wild, and I don't have anywhere to show them anyway. But breeding cows is a nice substitute. I get to feel smart that I can identify a cervix via rectal palpation. I only get two weeks to practice though--in July, my job is being outsourced to the bull.

The other good part of breeding cows is that I get to spend so much time just watching them. That's an aspect of vet medicine I feel I'm going to have a lot of trouble with. "What do you mean, work with other people's animals? Without two hours of observation?!"

Plus, I'm spoiled by having very professional cows. We don't keep any cows that kick or shake their heads at us, and you can usually talk them into going through a specific gate. Besides, they're Angus. I'm afraid this has left me with a strong opinion of what a "proper cow" looks like, which makes the far-more prevalent Holstein look like a sad, warped version of a bovine.